Trenton holds off PDS to improve to 3-0
TRENTON >> The Trenton High varsity girls’ basketball team has begun the 2023-24 season with three wins by a total of eight points.
Considering there is still a lot of room for improvement, that is an impressive start for first-year head coach Aja Carter’s squad.
The Tornadoes showed why Thursday when they held off Princeton Day School, 36-32, as the clubs combined to miss 36 free throws.
While the game’s inventor, Dr. James Naismith, was surely doing underground somersaults in his resting place, Trenton’s struggles at the charity stripe (8-for-34) were made less excruciating with the knowledge that the Tornadoes still connected on twice as many foul shots as the Panthers (4-for-14). And that after Trenton missed its first 14 free throws.
It was junior Jamirrah Glanton who snapped the slump by hitting two foul shots with 4:32 left in the third quarter, but it was the perseverance of senior guard/forward Ji’Asia Robinson that showed why the Tornadoes won their first three games for a second consecutive season.
Though dealing with her own free throw woes during the game,
Robinson came up big when it counted most.
Fifteen seconds after PDS’ Nandini Kolli scored off a rebound to pull the visitors within, 31-28, Robinson was fouled and hit her second foul shot. A minute later, she drained two free throws to up the home team’s lead to 34-28.
When Shelby Ruf hit a 17-foot jump shot and Mia Hartman connected on 1-of-2 foul shots to get the Panthers to 34-31, Robinson came up big again with 21 seconds left when she hit a shot in the lane.
“When we are struggling like that, I just try to do my part, and try to do better,” Robinson said. “Yes, I like playing in close games because it rushes our adrenaline and makes us go harder.”
That up-tempo mindset and clutch play down the stretch helped Robinson tie Glanton with a teamhigh 12 points. Glanton flirted with a triple-double with 14 rebounds and eight steals.
Despite its own concerns at the charity stripe, the Colonial Valley Conference’s newest member stayed resilient throughout to give itself a chance. Head coach Seraphine Hamilton’s club took the lead at the start of the second quarter, then again as the second half opened, this time holding it until 3:33 remained in the third quarter.
“We’ve improved a lot,” said junior forward Ruf, who was the game’s high scorer with 13 points and a team-high 11 rebounds. “We’re putting in a lot of work, so that we do not die off at all as games go on. I feel like we’re able to answer and respond to anything.”
Trenton’s players feel the same way, especially when it comes to
close contests.
“No, we don’t worry about scoring,” Robinson said. “We worry about defense. As long as we play it the way we’re supposed to, we’ll get points when they come. We just have to make sure we do what we can to make ourselves better.”
Most likely today both teams will find the added work they can